Selects: How Drowning Works

Hundreds of thousands of people drown around the world every year, and yet it can be easily prevented and is widely misunderstood – like how you can officially drown but live to tell the tale, or how you can drown but die days later. Learn all about it in this classic episode.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, It's Chuck. It's Saturday, and that means it's
time for another Saturday select. This one is originally was
originally released, and it's pretty terrifying because it's about drowning.
It's actually very sad. I don't even remember if we
made any jokes in this one, because drowning is frankly
terrifying and probably one of the worst ways that one

(00:22):
can die if you don't like being in a panic.
So how drowning works. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to

(00:43):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant,
and Jerry's over there, so that makes this Stuff you
Should Know. Hi, how are you feeling kind of upbeat? Positive? Well?
I will say that this topic, I felt like I
was having a panic attack researching and reading this stuff

(01:05):
me too, Like I noticed I was. I felt like
I couldn't breathe at some points. Yeah, it was, and
we covered a little bit of this and Worse ways
to die many years ago. But boy, oh boy, drowning
is no picnic. No, it's not. And one of the
things that I've always heard about drowning, is that like
it was actually a very peaceful experience. I don't think

(01:28):
that's the case. Yeah, I don't. I don't like Obviously
no one can say for certain, but it doesn't seem
to be no um at all, and it seems to
be like, actually not a good way to go. Well, actually,
I mean you probably could if you um. And this
is a this is giving something away early. But one
of the possible outcomes aside from death and morbidity, which

(01:51):
is you develop an injury or disability because of what happened.
Aren't you on record for hating that word morbidity? Yeah,
I don't know. I don't like it. Well, my apologies. Uh,
and no morbidity. So you could ask someone who suffered
drowning with no morbidity, like was it peaceful? And they'll
probably be like nope. Well that's where I got that from.

(02:14):
Was you know online? If you go and you got
to take it all with a grain of salt, because
there's plenty of fourteen year old who like to just
make stuff up. But there are you know, threads on
Reddit and other other places that basically are are supposedly
people who have survived drowning and I didn't find any
that were like it was actually very peaceful. My brain

(02:36):
flooded with endorphins and I was ready to go into
the light. Instead, it was more like, you know, I
saw one that said it burned like lava, which I mean,
if you think about it, you know, if you've ever
had something go down the wrong pipe or whatever, how
much that hurts your chest. Well, Chuck, we're here to
tell everybody that what you experienced where you took a

(02:58):
drink of coke and it went down the wrong pipe,
that was not that didn't go anywhere near your lungs.
That was the least of what can happen to you.
And that was it just hit your epiglottis, which is
that flap that converts your trichia into your esophagus. Right, yeah,
that flap. That's like sometimes I want to work and
sometimes I want to scare you to death. Right, but

(03:19):
zero zero coke went into your lungs and that happened
that that so imagine how bad that is. That was
just your epiglotis. It actually gets way way worse when
you actually are drowning. And you you said something that
we really need to point out here because there's a
for as long as people have been drowning, basically since
people have been people, right exactly, So for as long

(03:42):
as people have been drowning, we still have only very
recently begun to make universal definitions of what drowning is. Yeah,
it's two thousand two, the World Congress of Drowning. That's
a thing. Then they at least had the good sense
to hold it in Amsterdam at least so they could

(04:04):
get their good time on afterwards after the meetings. They're awful.
But what they did there was they decided, hey, we
need to really codify this because three fifty people a
year die and it's the third most common cause of
accidental death around the world. So let's like really kind

(04:26):
of classify this stuff. So everyone's on the same page
moving forward, Yeah, because everyone wasn't on the same page,
and actually, if you follow media reports, people still aren't
on the same page. A lot of a lot of
um uncleared terminology that the medical community doesn't recognize but
that the media uses pretty frequently. Um, there's pretty widespread

(04:48):
misunderstanding that drowning is not death. It's a way you
can die, but it's actually a specific type of injury
that starts with your epiglottis says we'll see um or
your larynx. I'm sorry, but it's it's it's like an
injury that can happen to you that you can die from,

(05:08):
but you can actually have drowned and survived. Yeah, that's
you know, that's very misleading because that's the the actual definition.
But in in everyday parlance, if you say, you know,
I went to the pool last weekend and my child drowned,
and someone said, oh my god, you know another fine, right, Like,

(05:31):
it's not it's not a very fair thing to say
to to a friend. No, it's not. But if you're
following the definition of the two thousand two World Congress
of Drowning, that would be the right thing for you
to say. Yeah, but that that kind of pedantry and
just everyday conversation. You should lead by saying I had
a close call. My child technically drowned according to the

(05:54):
World Congress of Drowning, right, and then pushed through doing fine,
push the glasses up your nose. It's just exactly so, um,
I gave away a little bit here. With drowning, the
whole process starts when water or liquid comes in contact
with your larynx, your voice box. That something as far

(06:17):
as human evolution goes, something about that filips your reptilian
brain out and your your your motor takes over, like
your motor instincts take over, and there's very little you
can do from that point on as far as conscious
thought and movement. Yeah, I mean, we'll we'll get to

(06:39):
that last part later. But um, you're totally right, man,
Like your body is trying to do one thing and
that is survived this experience. Um. And like I said,
we'll get in a little more of what drowning looks like.
But during drowning, you're right that that first contact with
water and the larynx, you have that gas initially and

(07:01):
then you you are in charge for a short time
because you try to hold your breath voluntarily, but then
your larynx just starts spasm ing and Hi. Hi hypoxemia, hypoxemia,
hypo xmia, hypoxemia, hypoxemia, Bet hypoxemia, No, hypoxemia, hypoxemia, That's

(07:26):
what I said, right, Oh my god, hypoxemia. It's funny.
I looked up a bunch of word pronunciations today, but
that one I just flew right by it. I'll tell
you when I've got down is kineta. Yeah, that's that's next. Right.
How about hypoxemia? Sure, Basically what that is is dree

(07:49):
decreased levels of oxygen in your bloodstream. So your body's
trying to fight that. Right, So your larynx, whether you
like it or not, your larynx has closed. You're not eathing,
you're holding your breath because your larynx is trying to
prevent liquid from going into your lungs. Right. And so
as this is going on, you're losing oxygen concentration in

(08:11):
your lungs. You're having a build up of c O two.
And then and I got this from a reference to
a passage from the book The Perfect Storm. But supposedly
studies have shown that after about eighty seven seconds, your
your body says, Okay, to hell with this. Um, I'm

(08:33):
I can't spasm any longer. I'm gonna try to take
a breath. If you happen to be underwater, then you've
just taken in water. And now a whole different set
of events is happening. Right, So you're already starting to um,
to to become sluggish, to lose consciousness a little bit
from that lack of oxygen because you haven't been breathing

(08:54):
for say, the last almost minute and a half. But
now you've taken in water onto your long and like
I said, this this changes things and it makes it
way way worse. Well yeah, and before that even happens,
your body becomes something called acidotic. How would you pronounce that? Uh?

(09:15):
That probably that way. I would actually listen to that one.
That's okay, what is it? It's acidotic? Oh it is, yeah.
I actually probably would have made it a long Oh yeah,
no longer apparently. Okay, Well, thanks for going the extra
mile on that one. Yeah, I had to make up
for the last one. Um. But that's basically when like,

(09:36):
if that happens, it can disrupt the electrical you're you're
you're wiring to your heart and you could go into
cardiac arrest. And that's sort of near the beginning of
this process, right, So just just bookmark that, everybody, because
all of this is happening before your larynx stop spasming
and you open up your airway and take a deep breath,

(09:58):
and then you're you if you have going to be
underwater or your mouth is just below water level, then
you've just taken in a bunch of water and your lungs.
So what happens when you take water into your lungs
is when you look at your um your lungs if
you can, if you can just peer at your lungs
everyone for a second, you're going to find that they
are actually branching increasingly smaller tubes. Right. Yeah, this is

(10:23):
like elementary school science. Like everyone learned about the bronchi,
the bronchioles, that alveolas. That was all kind of elementary
school stuff, right. So the point is that the in
the alveolis or the alveola, the little tiny air sacks
where you exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the capillaries

(10:43):
that bring blood to your lungs, there's a little something
called surfactant, and it's this chemical coating around your little
tiny air sacks that allow them to open and close,
which pumps the oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out. Right,
it allows for gas exchange. Is a very key part
of the whole system of staying alive. Yeah, because if

(11:04):
you're surfactin isn't working, then that alveola can't or alveola
list can't open or close, and so you're not breathing,
because that's really where the rubber meets the road when
you breathe. So if the surfactant is damaged, you can't breathe.
And when you take water into your lungs, it goes
to the end to those air sacks, and it, depending

(11:25):
on the type of water, it messes with the surfactant
one way or another. And all of a sudden, now
you are not exchanging um oxygen and carbon dioxide, which
you weren't doing very well already for the last minute
and a half, but now the water is totally screwing
up that jam. Well. Yeah, in the case of fresh water,
and this is something I didn't know. It is different

(11:46):
depending on saltwater or fresh water. But freshwater, if you're
in a swimming pool or a lake or something, it
actually destroys that surfactant and the alveoli collapse, right, they're
just kind of destroyed. Uh. And salt water, uh, it
actually doesn't destroy this refactant, but it washes it away,
which to me is sort of like splitting hairs. It

(12:08):
makes this afactant um it doesn't work anymore, no matter
which way slice it right exactly, And so there's UM
A couple of different. Two real differences between taking in
freshwater and taking in salt water in your looks because
fresh water bears a pretty strong resemblance to the water
in your body and specifically in your blood. When that

(12:30):
water enters your lungs, it actually passes very easily from
your lungs into your bloodstream. And so what happens is
the the dilution, the concentration of water in your blood.
Um it becomes overrun with water. So where you end up.
I saw apparently one World War two study found that

(12:52):
people's blood or animals blood, which I hate to think
of how they found this out, you know how they
found that out. But animals blood within three minutes had
an equal part of water and blood or whatever is
not water in the blood within three minutes, which is
way more of a dilution than we normally have. So

(13:13):
you've gone from not breathing very well because you're holding
your breath to suddenly not only are you not exchanging air,
your blood is diluted within like three minutes. In a
fresh water drowning, Yeah, you're really disrupting the balance of
of your blood and the water in your body. Everything
is just thrown out of whack. And then with saltwater,
something else different happens to um. You're that that saltiness

(13:37):
in the water in your lungs actually draws water out
of your blood, so that your blood becomes more concentrated
rather than more dilute if you drown in saltwater. The
upshot of all of this is you are in big
trouble once water hits your lungs. Yeah, in the case
of saltwater again in three minutes, and you know what's
happening to the animals because they called it experimental animals,

(14:00):
so in other words, they drowned animals. I was hoping
to dance around that, but yeah, that's what they did.
That's the reality. In three minutes with salt water, experimental
animals lost of their normal normal water volume in their blood. Yeah,
it's just thickened, which can't feel good. The thing is
is it took it takes, like from what I saw,

(14:22):
eight minutes to die. This is actually as as bad
as that sounds, this is actually a less quickly fatal
process than what happens to you with fresh water in
your lungs. But get this, chuck, here's where drowning gets
really odd. You can die of drowning without a single
drop of water ever touching your lungs. That sounds like

(14:46):
a good place to take a break. Oh are we
going to cliffhanger this? It's just mamma, jamma, I think
we should hang it off the cliff. Okay, let's do it,
all right, We'll be right back. M h man, Chuck,

(15:16):
good call, because even I'm like a little on the
edge of my seat and I know it's coming next
and you know how this thing ends. Yeah, uh yeah,
well you're exactly right. You don't have to uh like
that can happen, but to drown and die, you don't
need to be the TV or movie drowning where you're

(15:36):
where you're floating in the water, you're fully submerged. You
went down with the ship or something like that. Yeah,
I mean there's They used to call it dry drowning
in the media. They still call it dry drowning. It
was coined in the nineteen seventies. But those are drowning
deaths in which the larynx spasmed from exposure to water,
but they died from asphyxiation. No water entered the lungs,

(15:59):
And it's very it makes sense to call it dry drowning.
But the CDC and everyone else basically said this, this
is just drowning. It's drowning. Just because there's not water
in your lungs doesn't mean you didn't drown, right, because
whether it's the water in your lungs or the um,
the fact that you haven't been breathing, you're dying from asphyxiation.

(16:19):
And it's a water related asphyxiation, right, correct. But it
doesn't have to be water in your lungs. But that
happens to something like ten to twenty people who um
who die of drowning. They don't have any any water
in their lungs whatsoever. They just they die before their
layering stopped spasm ing. Yeah, and there's there have been
some really sad cases, this one, this reference in the

(16:41):
article you sent just last year. In two thousand seventeen,
a four year old boy in Texas was knocked over
by wave just playing out in the ocean like knee
deep in water. His head did go under for a
few seconds, but dad brings him out of the water.
The kid recovers, he gets smell on the butt and
goes off in plays and everything seems fine over the

(17:04):
next few days, he um. They think he has his
stomach flu. He complains of a pain in his shoulder,
and the parents did not get him to the doctor
fast enough and he died in his sleep. And then
doctors found a very small amount of water in his lungs. Yeah,
apparently it doesn't take much something like um. The most
drowning victims have something like four ccs per kilogram of

(17:25):
water in their lungs. So if you're a kid who
weighs fifty pounds, that's three ounces of water. Right to
die from that, right, But the thing that scared everybody,
scared of but Jesus side of parents everywhere about this
poor kid named Frankie Delgado. Um, he died like days
after he had his drowning incident. Right, No one knew

(17:46):
that could happen. And this is one of the ways
the media is not helping things. They call this dry
drowning too. That was never even called dry drowning. This
one is called secondary drowning. But again, if you go
to like the c d C or the World Health Organization,
they're like those those don't exist. Stop calling them that.
It's it's drowning and you can actually die of drowning

(18:07):
days afterward. But the thing that was really misreported about
Frankie Delgado and then other kids like him, is that
it gives the impression that, you know, Dad picked him up,
spanked him on the bottom, and he went along his
way and he was totally fine. Then all of a
sudden drops dead three days later. That's not how it works. You.
The kids starts, their health starts to decline. And usually

(18:30):
in cases where this is happening, where it's like a
delayed drowning death, um, they their health declines very obviously
within two or three hours of the incident, and it's
really bad. It's like they become sluggish because they're becoming hypoxic. Um.
They throw up a lot, they vomit a lot, they

(18:51):
might defecate themselves. Um, they just their behavior changes. It's
very obvious that something's very wrong with them. But the
problem is his most pay and don't say, oh yeah,
my kid took in some water in the pool. It's
a day before and they don't think to to They
just think, like Frankie Delgado's parents did, that it's a
stomach bug or something like that, when in fact they're

(19:12):
actually dying from drowning right in front of their very eyes. Yeah,
it's like the the head injury that you die of
a week later, um, because of whatever, some kind of
internal hemorrhaging that you don't even know what's going on. Right, Yeah,
it is very much like that Liam Neeson's wife, right, yes, right,
is she died in like a ski accident, right, Yeah,
Natasha Richardson and I I didn't look it up, but

(19:35):
I know it was. It was not that day, oh,
I didn't know that. I don't know how many days
later it was. But the same kind of thing where, um,
there's a there's something going on in the body because
of an incident that you don't realize that's going on.
And in uh, in this kid's case, I think his
uh he had a dimon Right, his lung tissues started

(19:56):
um swelling, right swell, and they could no longer like
collapse a little a v ol collapse that the gas
exchange wasn't going on, and so he had a decrease
in oxygen and an increase in CEO two. And that's
what you ultimately die from from drowning, right, right. But
you can also get injured. Um. Brain damage is usually

(20:16):
the major complication. If you don't die from drowning um,
you can have that tissue damage in your lungs. You
can get pneumonia or something called a r D S
Acute respiratory distress syndrome. Right, And there's also usually a
coat well not usually, but it's frequently. There's a code
morbidity with a drowning um, which is like a head

(20:38):
or neck injury, a spinal injury that if you dive
into the shallow, into the pool and you break your neck,
you're gonna start drowning like immediately because you just lost
consciousness and you're underwater. Um So there's, as we'll see
in talking about treating drowning, you want to you want
to be aware that there's a good possibility that the

(20:58):
person's neck is not quite right. Um. So here's one
other thing that I knew before, but I had learned
at one point and it really opened my eyes. Every
every representation of drowning I've ever seen in any movie,
on every TV show, in every book, in every song
about drowning, there they got it wrong. It's just wrong.

(21:23):
It doesn't look anything like what we've all been led
to believe. It looks like or sounds like, well, yeah,
I mean that is true if you are actually drowning.
But what you're talking about that you usually see in
the movies if they end up getting pulled out of
water and they're fine. It's just called aquatic distress. So
when you're splashing around and yelling, you aren't drowning at

(21:46):
that point. No, you're you could call it pre drowning. Yeah,
it's aquatic distress. That means you're you can't swim, you're panicking,
and you feel like I'm in big trouble. So you're
waving your arms and screaming when you actually start drowning. Uh.
This guy named Francesco a Pa he's a PhD. He
defined what's called the instinctive drowning response, which is nothing

(22:08):
like you see in the movies. It's very quiet, and
your body, like we mentioned earlier, your body's instinct kicks
into gear and it's not trying to wait for help
or yell. It's just trying to survive and get another
breath and keep that face above water right. It's it's
like all hands are on deck to keep your you

(22:29):
upright in the water. That's literally all hands are on deck.
If the deck is the water, right, you know, Yeah, no,
that's true. That's why I said it. So the thing is, though, Chuck,
with that aquatic distress thing, it doesn't always precede drowning
so much so that drowning can come on without aquatic distress,
and people are so conditioned to think of drowning as

(22:52):
aquatic distress or vice versa, that there's This is about
the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. There are kids
who will d rown. A substantial amount of kids who
drowned drown within twenty five yards of a parent or
whoever is supposed to be watching them, and a significant
portion of those kids drown with the parent or or

(23:13):
supervising adult actually watching them drown and not realizing what
they're seeing because it doesn't look like what they think
drowning looks like. I wouldn't overstated, but yeah, ten percent
of the parents actually watched this happening, right, So this
is this is what drowning looks like. Right. If you
you're not going to once the once drowning starts, if

(23:35):
you've gone through aquatic distress, once the drowning starts, you
are um. You have your head, your mouth is about
at water level, and you can't call out for help
because there's one of two things going on. Either you
are trying to catch your breath every time your mouth
comes above water, and it's happening so infrequently that all

(23:58):
you can do is gun inhaling and exhaling, or your
larynx is spasm ng and you're not breathing at all.
And if you're not breathing at all, you you obviously
physiologically can't shout or speak or do anything. But either way,
you're not UM. You're not able to shout or yell
or call for help or say anything. Yeah. I mean

(24:21):
the way I read it though, is it's not like
you're working on breathing. You have no choice in the matter. Yeah,
Like your body has taken over and it's not like
you're like, oh, I need to get my breath. You're you.
You may want to yell, right, but your body is
saying no. Breathing is speech is secondary in this whole situation.
We need we need to get you to breathe yep,

(24:41):
and then UM. Very similarly, your body you're not and
you can't control your arms any longer. Whatever you want
to do with your arms, you can't all you can
do is kind of flap at the water, and the
whole point of that is to keep your head above water,
is which as possible. One thing that I saw chuck

(25:02):
that I don't know if you've figured out. I can't
figure it out. But one of the things about the
instinctive drowning responses, you're not kicking, you're just using your arms.
I don't get that at all. Yeah, I mean, it
says no evidence of a supporting kick. I'm I don't
know about that. It just seems weird that your body

(25:22):
wouldn't be like, oh yeah, let's get the legs in
on this too, and maybe that'll actually help keep us
above water. That's kind of the most important part of
treading water. I wonder also if it if it's because
as you're you're getting a lower concentration of oxygen and
you're becoming a little more sluggish. Kicking your legs is

(25:42):
actually harder than flapping your arms, so you just can't,
like your muscles won't do it. I don't know, it's weird.
It seems like that would be part of that natural
instinct um. I would think so too. But another part
of the fact that you can't control your arms. Is
that if somebody holds a pole out right in front
of your hand, you can't say hand grab pole. Um,

(26:07):
you can't grab like a lifesaver ring Like there's you.
You can't do anything but flap your arms up and down.
And you're not doing that. Your your body has taken over.
And this is this instinctive response that dr P is
talking about. Yeah, and when they say you're not using
your legs, that you're completely vertical in water, Um, I
don't know. That's the part that doesn't make sense to me.

(26:28):
You can still be vertical in water and like you know,
dreading water and kicking. Yeah, I don't understand it either. Yeah,
maybe someone can fill us in on that one. So um,
this this whole instinctive drowning response. Supposedly the most people
can last between twenty and sixty seconds of doing this

(26:48):
basically bobbing and using every bit of your strength to
to get your mouth above water. But eventually you start
to lose that battle and your mouth comes above water
and less frequently, and then eventually you you were submerged.
And if you are if you see somebody whose head
is low in the water and they um, their mouth

(27:11):
is is at water level and their eyes are closed,
or they're just kind of blank and glassy, or their
hair is over their eyes. You're looking at drowning person
and you want to help them. Yeah. I thought that
hair over the eyes was interesting because there must be
just an immediate response when you get out of the
water to wipe the hair from your eyes. Think about

(27:33):
how annoying it is. What's gotta be it. So if
you see someone come out like the creature of the
Black Lagoon, that's not a good sign. Yep. If they're
gasping and they're doing this, that's another one too. If
they're trying to swim but they're not actually moving anywhere really,
or if they're trying to roll over on their back

(27:54):
and they're unsuccessful, these are all signs of drowning. Yeah.
I mean that was a lifeguard for a few years,
and it's Um, I think you're and they tell you
in class. You know that you're used to the movies,
and um, you got to really keep your eyes out.
You can't just be flirting with the girls, oh yeah,
waiting for someone to yell and scream because they're kicking

(28:14):
in in aquatic distress. You have to keep your eyes peel.
A good lifeguard is very vigilant. Well, I remember hearing
that that. Like, you know, when they interview most lifeguards about,
you know, somebody who drowned in their pool, They're like,
they had no idea, They were there a second and
then they were gone and I didn't even notice. It
didn't make a sound, you know. So yeah, you just
hit the nail and have whether you're a lifeguard or

(28:36):
whether you're a mom or dad or oh pair or whoever. Um,
your focus has to be on the person in the
pool that you're you're in charge of. Should we take
a break, Yeah, all right, we'll come back. We'll talk
about what to do and how to treat a drowning
victim if you are so unlucky. All right, so let's

(29:19):
say someone has drowned. Um, let's just say you're at
a pool, just to make this easy, because that's kind
of best case scenario. Because it's contained, there is usually
some sort of rescue equipment on hand. Um, it's not
like you're on the beach and you're like, I need
a defibrillator. Yeah, most pools have this kind of stuff. Now,
Plus you can also see the bottom. There's not usually

(29:41):
like an underwater hazard or and sure like that, it
is about a best case scenario. Yeah, so the h A,
the American Heart Association said that, UM, if possible, like
if you're not by yourself, do the do the common
sense thing, which is to send one person for help
or to call nine one one. Uh. These days with
phones every where, it's it's I'm sure increased response times.

(30:03):
But uh. And if you have a defibrillator, go get
that thing or have you know, have your have your
buddy do it, bring it to the victim's side. UM,
assess the situation like are they breathing, do they have
a pulse? Uh? And this is one of the few
situations they point out where because I know we covered
CPR and the hands only CPR is kind of what's

(30:23):
recommended now, but that is not the case with drowning. No,
apparently you still want to do mouth to mouth is
how I took that right? Yeah? I think so, which
has never made sense to me, because if you're blowing
into somebody's mouth, aren't you blowing carbon dioxide into their body?
What's the point of that? Is it just to get
the lungs opening and closing. I don't know. Maybe I've

(30:45):
never understood that, Yeah, because I don't think it's I
think that's the case. Like it's not saying your body
needs CEO two. I think if your lungs need to
be expanding and contracting. It's been a while though since
I lifeguarded. Yeah, but I mean, and it used to
be like, yeah, you do chest compressions in the mouth
to mouth, and then they said no, just do chess compressions.

(31:06):
So I was surprised to see that with drowning there
like do both. They're back with that, and then also,
don't forget while you're doing all this, keep in mind
that the person's neck might need to be supported or
kept at a certain straight angle. Um, because they may
have injured themselves that may have caused the drowning to
begin with. Yeah, like if they dove in or whatever. Right,

(31:29):
so if they're breathing but they're not awake, then roll
them over on their side, because you know they might
vomit and and affixiate that way, which, um, you know
the way Bond Scott went out, and I believe some
other rock stars have gone out that way, John Bonham,
Janice Choplin. Oh did they all affixiate? From vomit. Yeah, really,

(31:56):
I don't know. I was just trying to think of
musicians least likely to asphyxiate on his own vomit. Well
I think that's uh Benny Goodman, Yeah yeah, yeah, although
he parted, did he? I'm just speaking contrary. Okay, we
have to lightnessing up a little bit, right. I know,
it's it's hard looking for jokes in here. It's tough.

(32:19):
So let's see. You've got somebody who's breathing but but unconscious.
Roll them on their side. Uh, somebody who's not breathing
and doesn't have a pulse. You do CPR. You want
them the e m s to get there as fast
as possible, but CPR for you know, whether it's a
heart attack or whether it's a drowning. If you can

(32:41):
do CPR, you can prolong the amount of time it
takes for the e m s to get there. You're
just staving off like irreversible damage by by doing it
at the very least. Chess compressions. Yeah, absolutely so. One
thing that um I did not know that I ran
across Chuck is there's actually a tremendous amount of racial

(33:04):
disparities when it comes to drowning. Um, there are far
greater numbers of African Americans and this is the US
strictly African Americans and then Native Americans and Alaskan Natives
who drown compared to white kids. And depending on the

(33:26):
venue in the age group, it can actually get shocking
how how great the difference is. Yeah, between the age
range of eleven to twelve years old, UM, African Americans
drowned in swimming pools ten times the rate of white
kids ten times. And this is something I did know

(33:46):
because the pool I lifeguarded, where a lifeguarded for three years,
was majority African American kids. And they, you know, we
got not special training, but we got um we were
told that by the lifeguard company. Like it was a
huge lifeguard company that supplied lifeguards all over the city exactly.

(34:08):
So at my pool and pools like that, they you know,
we had little breakout sessions for us. We were like, hey, listen,
it is a systemic thing in this country where little
black kids don't learn how to swim as often. And
you know, the CDC has done studies and there's a
professor in Montana named Jeff Whilst who wrote Contested Waters

(34:28):
Colon a social history of swimming pools in America, and
it all makes perfect sense because of discrimination and segregation.
When swimming pools and recreational swimming and sports swimming started
to come around, these black families couldn't go to the pools,
so they didn't take swim lessons, they didn't learn how
to swim. If your grandparents didn't learn how to swim,
then there, what is it like? I think they even

(34:50):
have a stat you have a thirteen percent chance to
take swimming lessons and learn how to swim if your
parents did not, only a thirteen p sent chance, right,
So it's just passed down. Yeah, And it's just odd
that it coincided where a surge and popularity of pools
and swimming in America coincided with two of the um

(35:14):
times when segregation was most strictly enforced in America, to
the twenties and thirties and the fifties and sixties, and
so yeah, as a result, African Americans missed out on swimming,
and and it's intergenerational and passed down still to this day. Um,
among African American families, not all of them obviously, but um,
there are plenty out there who are like, I don't

(35:35):
know how to swim, and I'm very much afraid that
if I get you near a pool, you're going to drown.
So I don't even want you taking swimming lessons because
I don't want to mess with that kind of thing.
And so, like you said, it becomes intergenerational. Yeah, and
there are plenty of programs now, thankfully. Uh and even
when I was lifeguarding, you know, a thousand years ago, um,
plenty of programs to try and give reduced rate or

(35:59):
free swimming less in communities like that and basically get
every get everyone trained up swimming lessons. Help. It is
one of the ways to prevent drownings is knowing how
to swim. Yeah, it sounds like a no brainer, it does.
But you can drown even when you can swim. So
that's the reason they point out that one of the
best ways to prevent drowning is learning how to swim, right,

(36:20):
it is. But they also make a very big point
if once your kid knows how to swim, you can't
just be like, oh, you're fine, you go to the
pool by yourself. Like this. This one article put it
like learning to swim doesn't drown proof your kid. Something
like a quarter of deaths by drowning are from kids

(36:41):
who knew how to swim or people who knew how
to swim. So, um, it's good to know how to swim,
and it probably will help at some point, like anytime
you get into a pool, but it doesn't drown proof you.
And you need to also be smart in other ways
to Yeah. I mean we're literally right in the middle
of swim lessons for our daughter and um at, you know,

(37:02):
approaching three years old, and it's tough man. She's she
doesn't like getting her face in the water, So there's
a that's just smart. Well, yeah, that's a good instinct probably,
but not when you're trying to teach your kid how
to swim. That's problematic. So it's a slow process in
our case. Other kids, um take to it like a

(37:24):
duck in the water as they say, Yeah, I I did.
I would still remember taking swim lessons, and I was
a pretty little kid myself, but I remember, I remember.
The one thing I hated about swim lessons is that
that came I had to leave in the middle of
thunder the Barbarian on Saturday morning cartoons, so I never

(37:45):
really got to watch a single full episode of Thunder.
And then the other thing I remember is realizing that
as I was swimming towards the swim instructor, I wasn't
getting any closer. And it finally dawned on me. I
was like, you're moving for her away that old trick,
and she was like, no, I'm not. And suddenly I
was like there you know. Um. But I remember being like, oh,

(38:08):
there's such a thing as guile in deception. I had
no idea. Now I learned it thanks to my swim instructor. Yeah.
My deal was I was terrified of swimming and swim
class drowning. Oh where are you? Okay? Um? Yeah, I
just my brother and sister went to swim class. They

(38:29):
learned how to swim. I refused. I was really scared.
I would not go out of the shallow in for
many years. I know, I was a little scaredy cat.
But I my mom. I remember very distinctly when I
was I guess I was like, I was kind of
old man. I was like six years old, and she

(38:50):
she didn't threaten me, but she said, hey, listen, you're
gonna take swim lessons. Uh, in like July, it's you've
got to learn how to swim. July is go time,
and this was uh and I'm making updates, but let's
say it was July. And then in June we went
to visit my grandparents, whose neighbor head of pool, and
we were doing that thing where you hold on to

(39:11):
the edge of the pool to get a bunch of
kids and go around and around and create like a
little whirlpool. And I remember very distinctly taking my hands
off earlier and earlier and taught myself to swim that day.
Oh cool. And it was because it was kind of
a current and people in front of me and behind me,
and I just started letting go a little sooner and

(39:31):
a little sooner in the deep end, and before you
know what, I was doing a very rudimentary dog paddle
and that led to very poor swimming, which I still
still have today. Were you swimming around and you're like
self taught? Yeah, at his at his T shirt that
had self taught back off. I'm still not a good swimmer.

(39:52):
I mean, I can swim fine, but I'm not as
far as swimming strokes and proper swimming, I'm terrible. I
can do a swimming stroke, it's not any good, but
I can do the technique of it. But I was
on a swim team. See, I never was. It was
the worst swim team in the league, and I was
the worst member of the team. Yes, so, um, we're

(40:16):
in the county. That was your nickname. My worst was
pretty much. My worst was the backstroke, and um, the
coaches would always put me in a back stroke could
be like, please, don't, like, why are you doing this?
And now, as a grown up, I know because they
were just like, we're losing anyway, We're gonna watch Josh
do the backstroke. Every time I did the backstroke, I
would end up like two lanes over. Yeah, and when

(40:41):
I bumped to the other kid, they would inevitably stand
up and so we both be disqualified because I couldn't
stay in my own lane. And then the coaches just
thought that was hilarious. Yeah, I was never on a
swim team, and that's where you learned how to do
it properly, you know. I mean I can I can
ape those strokes from why ching the Olympics, but um,

(41:02):
it's it's nothing close to I mean, I can't do
butterfly obviously, because I'll teach you this summer. Okay, Butterfly
is definitely the hardest man. But the breaststroke, it's nice.
It's a good it's a good stroke. I'm gonna I'm
I'm teaching you to swim this summer some some strokes. Okay, Yeah,
I mean I can do a rudimentary breaststroke, but it
looks more like I'm just kind of bobbing up and down.

(41:22):
I'm not really not going very far. Yeah. But once you,
once you, if you do it, you're like, oh, this
is what it's supposed to feel like. I know what
you're talking about. I've had that sensation before too. But
you're just like a like a frog that ain't quite right,
you know. All right, So here's some other handy rules. Um,
if you have a newborn or a toddler or anybody

(41:45):
anyone basically up to about four um, they say to uh,
they call it touch supervision. So like, never be more
than an arm link away because it can happen very
fast in a swimming pool and a bathtub. Hub, get
off your cell phone, put down your Marie Claire in

(42:05):
your Red Book, and your Readers Digest or your Men's
Health Sure or your Bodybuilders Weekly or your Mad magazine,
pay attention to your kid. Uh. If you have a pool,
you need to have that thing fenced in. Oh yeah,
or even better these days they have those excellent. Um

(42:27):
it's not a hard top, but it's between hard and
the little soft top that that are retractable. So you
get out and you go inside and you can you
can cover that pool right up. Yeah, although I think
by law you have to have a fence around, like
four sided fence um with like a self closing gate
that also self latches too. Yeah, and you have to

(42:49):
grease it with crisco so little kids can't climb. Well,
you do that anyway, right, but it is it's fun
to watch him try. You should learn CPR. You should
have all the little life saving implements at your pool.
Oh another one I had not thought about this, but
if you have a pool, you want to have a
landline too, because you need to keep a phone that

(43:10):
works right by your pool at all times. Yes, so
you need to be like Thurston Howell and have a
pool that made out of a clamshell that a guy
in a white tuxedo can bring over and sit down
on a side table, or like Hunter Thompson at the
Beverly Hills Hotel. I need bring up Hunter Thompson at

(43:31):
some point in this. One other thing I want to
say to also, if your kid has like an episode
that looks like a close call to you but they
seem fine, then yes, keep an eye on them for
that the idea that they could conceivably have drowned and
they could be developing symptoms. And if they start to
develop any symptoms and take them to the e R

(43:54):
and the e R doctors will very kindly listen to
their lungs to see if they hear any water. Easy peace, right.
At the same time, don't freak out, Like if your
kid just coughs and sputters a little bit and they're
fine and they don't develop any symptoms at all, they're
fine most likely, right, But it does pay to be

(44:14):
vigilant and its it's it is better safe than sorry.
Just don't be terrified if you're your kid. You know,
as long as they didn't have anything that you could
be like that was kind of a drowning episode that
just happened, Um, you're probably in the clear. Yeah, it's
it's a rare case that kid in Texas. But because
it does happen. Keep an eye out for sure. On

(44:36):
the other hand, though the media like talking about this stuff,
supposedly is saved at least one other kid's life. Um
from the publicity that went around that case, that that
it happened to another kid later on in the parents
had heard about this and took their kid into the
e er and saved saved your life. I believe. There
you have it. Um. You also don't necessarily just drown

(44:58):
in a pool either, No, I mean this stuff is horrifying.
The thought of an infant drowning and a dog water
bowl is a nightmare scenario. Yeah, drop um, dog water bowl,
open cooler that has melted ice, um, toilets, a cleaning bucket,
anything that can hold something like one inch of water

(45:21):
is um is is enough to drown and an infant
and possibly a toddler I think too. Um, Cars people
drowning cars as well. Bathtubs are actually another one. So
get this man. So usually, uh, people who drown in
bathtubs are infants are the elderly. Um, but there's a

(45:44):
lot of adults who drown in bathtubs and specifically hot tubs.
Did you know about this well, I mean, yeah, you
get a little drunk, you're stand up too fast, and
you're dizzy from the temperature. It's not good. It's not
a good combo. And that's supposedly what happened to Oorvial Reddenbocker.
He was in a hot bath and suffered a heart

(46:04):
attack and ended up drowning. Whinney Houston died in a bathtub.
And I think every year in the US about three
hundred and thirty people drowning their bathtub in a year.
It seems like a normal amount, right, Yeah. I guess
how many die in bathtubs in Japan in a year?
How many? Fourteen thousand? Why? I don't know. I think

(46:29):
they take more hot baths. They have the soccer tubs too, Yeah,
as part of it's like part of the culture. That's
the only thing I can think of. Because they also
have like one third of the population of the US too,
that's a lot of drowning deaths and bathtubs. Man. Man. Yeah, Well,
they did say to like more people die in Florida

(46:51):
in car drownings just because there are more waterfront roadways.
And then earlier when we talked about the h racial
aspect the whole deal, we kind of just kind of
flew past it. But Native Alaskans and indigenous people's um
died more than white people because they are more often
in bodies of water that are probably far away and

(47:15):
have logs and rocks and things underneath. Yeah, so they
have more exposure to natural bodies of water than the
average American. Yeah, you got anything else? Nope, Well that's drowning.
Hopefully we helped in some way because summer's coming. Okay,
that's right, and I'm going to teach you the breaststroke. Sweet.

(47:37):
If you want to know more about drowning, you can
type that sad said word into the search bar at
how stuff works and it'll bring up something. And since
I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna
call this first thing I just pulled up on my
phone right here. Look at that nice But it's about
the Steve Miller band and peaches. Remember the emojis episode

(48:00):
one of us? Probably you, I didn't say Steve Miller,
I said, all men brothers. Oh well, he said, someone
mentioned the line from Steve Miller Band, I really like
your peaches. I want to shake your tree. Didn't want
of us not mentioned that. Now this person is out
of their mind. Well he has an email. Regardless, we

(48:22):
all love the Steve Miller band. Uh. Now this story
is probably not true, but I want you to believe it.
Back in college, when my youngest daughter was born, I
was driving a delivery truck for a small auto parts company.
I worked with this old guy and he was probably
like forty two. Uh and his stories. Uh. I worked
with this old guy. He's probably like forty two. That's

(48:45):
me talking. So one time he told me that he
worked in this auto shop years ago and it was
owned by this husband and wife. Uh. And he had
played bass for a little while with Steve Miller band,
and her name was Peaches, his wife. So the story
was that a line from Steve Miller really like your
Peaches want to shake your tree? Was Steve Miller taunting

(49:05):
his own bass player. I mean, he says, I don't
know if he's true, but the story is like, it
rang true enough. So I like to think that somewhere
there's a couple that owns an auto parts part store
in Arizona and uh to stick it to Steve Miller,
who doesn't want to stick it to Steve Miller, you know.
And that's from Jared Dude. I was in a the

(49:28):
local market near my house about a year ago and
some artisan tonic I know, uh, and my buddy Chris Cox,
you know who plays bass in my band, we were
he happened to be in there. We were kind of
talking about music. His wife's name is Peaches too. No,
it's not um. We're talking about music, and this guy

(49:48):
who looked like h like an old Southern rocker, came
up and he was like, you guys in a band? Yeah?
And he was like me too, It's like, oh yeah,
and I'm the flute player in the Marshall Tucker band. No,
And I was like whoa. Like, if Marshall Tucker band
is known for one thing, it's the flute. Like, for real,

(50:08):
what's the what's name off a couple of their FLUTEI songs? Well,
heard it in a love song. Can't be wrong that
one has that famous flute part. No, no, you know
that song, sure, but I can't think of the flute part.
I mean it's the whole intro. Dude, do do do
do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do

(50:29):
do do do do do that's all flute. Oh, I
guess I've never realized that. Anyway, A bunch of their
songs have the flute, and he is, granted, he was
not the original flutist. He's one of these, you know,
Marshall Tucker Bands, one of those deals where it's like
two original members. They've had twenty twenty flute players, like
the Temptations or something. Yeah, but I was still impressive. Man,

(50:52):
That's that's amazing. It is impressive. And then like anchor man,
he whipped one out of his sleeve right there in
the store, kicked some candles off the tables in winter time. Yeah,
I'd say Marshall Tucker Band is second only to Jethro
Toll for flute innovation. Okay, that's who I'm thinking of.
They did like aqua long Hey, hey, how about that.

(51:15):
We just came full circle. All right, let's just end it.
If you want to get in touch with Chuck and
Me and Jerry, you can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,

(51:35):
visit the i heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,